It’s been almost a week since I’ve been on the ice and I’ve been jonesing to get my gear on for reasons other then taking pictures and I’ve done my fair share of travelling also . Today is my big trip with the boys from Dunedin and we are heading to Gore with a few cases of beer in hand . When I woke up one of the first things I did was to message the group saying how excited I am and I’m guessing they were mostly all sleeping still but I couldn’t sleep and no it wasn’t because my room was too hot or filled with flying critters hahaha ! Hockey for me is like waking up for Christmas when you’re a kid but happens every day .... that feeling has never changed for me and there always has and always will be that feeling of euphoria on these hockey days where you wake up and just can’t wait to open your presents but in my case I just can’t wait to get on the ice . Kathleen wakes up and we head off to grab ourselves a Starbucks to fuel ourselves and we skipped breakfast as we were both still full from our stuffing at that Italian restaurant the night before and opted to wait to eat with the fellas at The Kensington Pub where we were all supposed to meet . Drew told us to all meet there at 12:30 pm and I would have thought he would get us around 12:15 but instead he said to be ready for 12:30 ? I’m not gonna be judgemental and leave it to the guys that know better then I do so I was in the lobby when I was supposed to be there and they showed up with the bus they rented with a trailer in tow for our gear and we hopped in to go meet the rest of the guys .
Kathleen came to the bar to grab a bite but did not come to Gore with us as she planned to go visit the beach here and no better time to go then when I am doing something else as I couldn’t care less about a beach but unfortunately on this day it was raining and not ideal beach weather but she’s persistent and decides to stick to her guns . I don’t blame her because a lot of stuff is not going as planned here like that haunted tour we wanted to do on Friday that was cancelled for the weekend because of a family death ... which I’m not joking , I told her to ask if we could attend 😝 dead bodies and ghosts anyone ? Cmon chill out I’m just kidding ... or am I ? Anyways hockey , let’s talk more about hockey ok 👌 when we get to the Kensi (as the fellas call it ) we meet the rest of the team and they are all waiting for their meals with beers in hand so we put in our orders and I get a steak sandwich which only comes with one slice of bread and to be honest I kinda never know what to do with those type of meals . Do I eat it with my hands ? Or do I use a fork and knife ? It’s too thick for that and it’s weird holding a sandwich with the steak used as the top piece of bread isn’t it ? Ahh whatever I forced it into my ever growing fat belly and enjoyed it with all the confusion going through my head as I’m trying to talk to everyone with the hopes that they don’t notice my odd eating manners .
Time to jump on the bus for our 2 hour drive to Gore which we have 2.5 hours to be on the ice before and I didn’t sweat it as the game will start when the game starts and the guys don’t seem to be too bothered either . On the bus ride I opt not to partake in any beer drinking as I’ve learned my lesson from past trips that I don’t want to be drunk and have guys look at me strangely ... apparently I have an image to uphold as The Travelling Goalie which I would gather has some people believing I’m a pro or something so I try to approach it as a pro and tell everyone I’m not that good which I can in all humble manners say that I am . I hope that last statement confused you all 😜 the bus ride was full of jokes and I sat beside Drew and we were all having fun telling stories and talking like we were in an extended dressing room conversation but on a bus driving through the beautiful New Zealand country side and Drew was my personal guide as we passed through his hometown of Milton and showed me how he grew up playing “beer fence” and the rest of the guys kept saying how Milton is the town of opportunity . They are taking the piss but let me explain this concept of having a day called “beer fence” . From what I gather all the town drunks organize a day to get absolutely smashed out of their brains at someone’s house and that starts with some brave person offering to host it and get his house pretty much demolished from beyond drunken behaviour . The houses all have fences and evertime you finish your beer whether it bottle or can ... you put the empty on the fence and when the beer that has to go on the fence post comes up that person has to go to the local bar or store to grab a bottle of port wine to be chugged . So this starts at 6 am and over the day that trip to pick up the port gets tricker and trickier and over the years the means of transportation has changed from it being a bike to having two bikes fused together to have two people fight their way to the store on this contraption . This sounds like fun but sometimes ends up with locals calling ambulances and even on one occasion one of Drew’s mates called an ambulance twice in one day only to use the ambulance as a means of transportation to get to the bar which is not far from the hospital in another town . HAHAHA ! I’m still pissing myself laughing over these stories about Milton the town of opportunity 😉
The fellas didn’t fill me in too clearly about the sitauation at the rink in Gore was and all I asked was is there a shower and what I really should have asked was is there changing rooms with showers ? When we arrived we had 15 minutes until our ice time and we all stormed the rink where I soon found out that there are no change rooms .... you dress in the stands , nothing new to me as I tell the lads that I’ve changed in malls and in storage sheds and even in a staircase once but it is always an eye opener to realize you will be getting half naked in front of whoever happens to be there . Again I am assured that there are showers down the hall and I’m happy I took one of my hotel towels with me for the two hour ride home plus bar stops after the game . Once I got dressed I jumped on the ice and I’ve been told that this is the most southern indoor ice rink in the world which is pretty cool to say I’ve had the opportunity to play here . The rink has no glass on the boards and has netting instead which is the norm in most countries and one of the sides of the rink has what I’m guessing to be sheets of plywood on top of the boards instead of netting as it is covering the concrete on the other sides and the guys tell me you don’t want to be hit or throw a hit on that side of the ice as it hurts both parties involved 😜 this rink is part of a giant community center with a pool and some other facilities also which I had no time to check out because of the rush to get on the ice . When I finally got dressed and filled my water bottle I jumped on the ice and it was soft , like really soft and more soft then I would usually like since I don’t sharpen my skates . I did my usual routine of taking a lap , stretching then shooting a few pucks before trying to scrape up the crease but when I went to shave ice all that happened was me shoving slush around with no snow ....yikes ! Then I took my place between the pipes and the guys teed off some heaters at me and I’m pretty sure Drew caught me in the neck and I played it off like it didn’t hurt but I can admit now that my clavicle is a bit sore from that ...
Game began and we have a timekeeper in place and we play 20 minute periods with no stop time and no ref and immediately I can see that the squad I’m travelling with from Dunedin are much stronger then our hosts from Gore . We jump out to a lead and then one of the Gore players breaks in and around a defence man and starts to cut to the net and I didn’t want to be too aggressive so I kinda let in a softie when she , yes I said she .... put the puck between my legs . I wasn’t really there to be Mr. domination but I should have stopped that with a sweep of the stick . Maybe I should be more aggressive in a nice way and the first period ended with us up like 4-1 . Before the period ended there was a play where the puck came in and I went to play it and my skate dug in so deep that it left a bad groove in the ice and I fell down almost giving up another goal while I luckily swept the puck away from the same female that scored on me . Instead of her hitting the puck I took a stick to the head and she apologized but I soon realized this could turn ugly and when I skated to the bench I could see the look in all the guys eyes wondering if I really know how to play goal lol 😝 maybe it’s just my intuition , or paranoia but I knew I had to make up for my errors . I showed a couple guys the gash in the ice to warn them but they blew it off as normal on this ice . We switched ends and when I got to the other crease I noticed there was actually snow in the crease and this must be to the home teams advantage and it definitely was more to my liking . I played much better at that end and was still feeling like I had more to prove to the guys and I was beginning to come out more to play pucks as most of the action was at the other end .... of course on one of my adventures outside the crease I choked and gave up a softie and at that point realized there were a lot of people watching this game in the stands . That feeling of shame almost made me wanna puke but I kept my head down and tried to ignore my feelings and picked myself up and vowed to turn things around and before you know it the period was over and I would say we were probably winning by a score of roughly 10-2 apparently the timekeeper might have fudged the numbers a bit and I don’t blame him as it really was a lopsided affair .
As we were switching ends my goaltending counterpart came to me and offered to switch teams for the third and the first thing I said was “so I can stay at the other end ?” and he said yeah and even though I knew I would have to play the guys I’m travelling with I knew I had the better crease to contend with even though I also knew I was gonna have to step up my game or be forced to travel with a bunch of guys that would probably tear me a new one with ridicule . That third period I came out and played some stellar hockey and made bundles of sweet saves as I stymied my travel companions as the team from Gore also stepped up their game . I am not gonna mention names but we all know who I robbed in that period and who got stopped on a couple break aways 😜 and the period ended with the two teams scoring 2 goals each and I think at the end of the game everyone was a winner . The team from Gore felt good about that last period , the team from Dunedin felt good about their overall performance and I felt good about the way I ended up playing and then we all felt good with some beers 🍻 . Unfortunately we then found out that the showers were turned off for some reason and we couldn’t shower ??? Wtf ! That’s when I introduced a few fellas to an old trick I learned in Hawaii called a Puerto Rican shower ... now I’m not trying to be racist or anything so don’t be a snowflake ❄️ and go whining about me calling it that as this is how I was introduced to this method of showering ok ! You take your towel and wet half of it and lather it up with soap and wipe yourself down and you then wash the soap off to wash the lather off and finally you take the dry end and dry yourself off 😉 so a few of the guys were convinced enough to try this and we went to the public bathroom where we attempted this feat and there is always the suspicion that someone will walk in randomly seeing some dudes standing there naked washing themselves like a gang of hobos and thankfully that didn’t happen and at the least I can say that it was more refreshing for those of us that did this then the others who got to suffer the rest of the night with that hockey stank hanging over them like the grim reaper does on your deathbed .
The arena shut us in meaning they locked up and allowed us to enjoy beers until they had to lock up the back door to go home and when it was time to leave we headed to a local bar which I thought would be the first of many stops on the way back to Dunedin . I know Drew was planning to tie one off and so were a few of us . When we got to the first pub you could tell that the staff didn’t really want us in there and turned us away because there were no empty tables and when we started walking away with that feeling of rejection we were called to the patio by the locals who pointed us to join them and we quickly turned around and asked if we could sit on the patio and the staff reluctantly said yes . The restaurant was full of families and they all stared as our team of half drunks walked in and then we soon realized we weren’t the drunkest people at this establishment! Those locals were on the piss all day watching the ponies and boy were they hammed . I would have called it the spilly drink section 🤤 everyone ate while we were there aside from myself as I had plans for a dirty kebab in the later hours as you do on a good night out but that was my mistake . When we left we soon found out our driver had other intentions and put his pedal to the metal and ignored any chants to stop in to the pub in Milton which kinda sucked since Drew had his mates waiting on us and as we drove on it seemed like we would have a good go at it once we let our driver drop the bus off and the plan altered to let’s grab some bevs go back to Drew’s and get a better buzz before heading out ? Drew grabbed two cases of some Speights which is the equivalent of Molson products back home and the crowd dispersed ??? I even talked Kathleen into joining us and we grabbed her from the hotel on the way to Drew’s place where there then were 6 of us that should have made for some good times but when we got to Drew’s one of the guys flat out disappeared and two of the others including “zero fucks given” had their ride pick them up which left myself with Kathleen , Drew and DG with Drew’s roommate so .... we had a few beers as I’m not one to waste beer and then we called it a night . Kind of anti climatic but everyone has other plans I guess . That dirty kebab I dreamt of ended up being a family meal at McDonalds as there is one down the road from my hotel and we caught an Uber back which was very cheap and our driver was an interesting fella .
Drew I know you are reading this and I want to thank you once again for organizing this all ! You’re a solid dude and definitely not some bogin 🤪 also want to thank the rest of the gang from Dunedin for being so friendly and showing me a good time and I hope the best for you all this winter in your leagues and I would also like to thank the guys from Gore having us over for a game and reminding those I contacted there that didn’t follow through with responses that it would have been a blast if I got to stay there a bit and they probably missed out by not responding .... and things got messed up anyway when the rink in Dunedin closed after I booked my flight so you guys essentially saved the day 👍 and if anyone is reading this that ever wants to come play hockey here look up the DIHL and if anything let me know and I will put you in touch with these guys who are always more then happy to make more friends . This is the only link I could find for Dunedin Ice Hockey so check it out Dunedin Ice Hockey
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